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In response to anonymous "Intel Boy" (biased, biased, biased) you can be in love with Intel if you choose. My experience has been that AMD processors have always been smother running and they run cooler than Intel which increases processor life. The AMD64 is in its infancy. It will get better in the months to come.Reply

For #4 and other intel fan boys. I understand that you are in furious, you think as chip costs higher it is better and you paid much more money for intel and what? It usually is deafeted by AMD again and you feel sorry especially after the scandal with BAPCo where became clear that BAPCO is witing benchmarks for intel to show tham in better lighte heh even in sys marks 2002 which is "broken" and AMD doesn't recognize this bench even in this test which must not be used by anand athlon51fx is better than 3200EE of intel. and I can't understand how u can defend Intel when thic processor has 3.2 Gghzs and is DEAFETED BY 2200Gghz ? more than 1.2 Gghz handicap. I'll never bye intel even in due of this caus here is clear for even the dumbiest donkeey which technologie is better. thats why real computer specialists always prefare AMD and love tham. Reply

These benchmark figures appear as if the P4 was used in a single channel setup. Does anybody know if this is correct? Also, ECC DDR-400 chips are very hard to come by, prohibitively expensive, and aren't available with low latencies. I don't think FX systems will be price competitive. What good is the high memory limit when you can only afford 512Mb, or a fast CPU with C3 memory? Too bad.Reply

Let me say the article is great, no complaints there. I know it takes alot of work to produce these articles.

Now, I see two reasons for using a game as a cpu benchmark: 1) It presents a fair (emphasis on the word 'fair') comparison of the competing cpu architectures and scaling issues. 2) The game itself is of current interest to the community.

In your article you already concede 2). Quake3 itself is not relevant as a game to anybody. Quake3-derived games are another matter, and are still popular and certainly relevant. More on these later.

I believe there is strong evidence that Quake3 does not provide a fair benchmark for comparing *modern* (AthlonXP and possibly Athlon64 as well) AMD cpus vs Intel cpus. The reason being (and let me emphasize that I don't know this as an verified fact, I'm going on what a couple of programmers involved with helping AMD produce optimized game code have told me) that the Quake3 cpu recognition code does not recognize the AthlonXP as an SSE-capable cpu. Not only that, but the 3DNow code in Quake3 is apparently non-functional for this cpu.

The politics and history behind this are interesting, but probably boil down to the AthlonXP being released well after Quake3, and Carmack being rightly uninterested in patching an old game.

If this is true, you are benchmarking two equally SSE-capable cpus against each other, using a game engine which enables SSE for the Intel cpu and *disables* SSE for the AMD cpu (apparently there's no simple way to force SSE recognition either), for no valid reason, other than the game is too old to know about the AMD cpu's capabilities. What would be even worse is if this same recognition problem carries over to the Athlon64 (I have no word on this) and to newer Quake3-based games.

Again, assuming this is true, it removes any rationale for using a 3-year old game that: a) few people play, b) which gives ridiculously high scores, and which c) unfairly handicaps AMD cpus; as a benchmark to be used specifically in comparing AMD cpus vs their Intel competitors in articles such as this one.

So. Here are the recommendations I, as an interested Hardocp/Anand/Toms reader (and admitted AMD fan) am making to you and your site:

1) Investigate this matter further, and write an article discussing it. And in particular discuss the relevance of this cpu issue to current Quake3-based games. Assuming there is in fact an Intel bias to Quake3-based benchmarking I think people would be very interested to learn about it. Apparently the SSE issue does indeed carry over to later games.

2) Assuming there is a bias, discontinue using Quake3 as a cpu benchmark, and especially discontinue it's use when comparing AMD vs Intel cpus. The game will never be patched to fix this issue, and using 3rd party fixes noone cares about is more or less pointless too. I'm referring to the dlls on this page: http://speedycpu.dyndns.org/opt/

This guy is one of the programmers I referred to earlier, and he tells me the dlls do not enable SSE where it really matters anyway. The other was a student working at AMD writing assembly 3DNow code. The best solution is simply to retire this benchmark, just as Q1 and Q2 were retired.

"For starters, at a 192mm^2, the Athlon 64 and Athlon 64 FX are well above AMD's "sweet spot" for manufacturing. When we last talked with AMD's Fred Weber, 100 - 120mm^2 die size is ideal for mass production given AMD's wafer size, yields and other manufacturing characteristics - and the Athlon 64 is close to twice that size"

If you calculate it out, the 64FX is closer to 4x the die size of the "sweet spot". 192mm x 192mm = 36864 sq mm. The "sweet spot" is 100mm x 100mm = 10000 sq mm. Sorry, just figured I'd point that out.

don't hold your breadth1 as far as ms is concerned the visual studio compilers is still not truly 32 bit let alone be 64 bit. without such compilers you cannot get 64 bit apps

Even Winxp so claimed to be redisigend from bootom up is not true. Well its desigend from broken pieces on the ground hurriedly glued together. How come you still have a System and a System32 folders in c:\Windows??? Thats the 16bit and 32 bit DLLs. Why the sudden Blue scren of death? Same old problem - confilcts between DLLs.

Try writing code in Visual STudio and query the WinOS ver - for WinXP you will get WinNT as the response. HOw can a truly ground up redesigned OS behave as such? Beats me?

Until such time that WinXX OS is truly 32bit or 64 bit you cannot have any true 64 bit apps running.

The BIOS also have problems. nFOrce2 still buggy and not properly fixed - can you trust nForce3? If those guys cannot fix up nForce2, then nForce3 is gonna have lots more problems.Reply

On what exactly are you basing your arguments? You obviously have no experience or knowledge of Win64... If you did you'd realize 64 bit versions of Windows NT date back to NT4 on DEC Alpha hardware... You obviously have no clue what so ever... Try posting a relevant argument next time... Try something based on benchmarks, and heck, next try even putting it into context as to how you use your computer...Reply

#102 - that's eight quarters of losses in a row and this quarter just about to end will make 9. It is projected that AMD will not be back into the black until at least Q4 2004 - but that was before they bought into that Flash business that is also losing money. Reply

#102...I don't see AMD laughing all the way to the bank any time soon. Last time I checked they lost money for over a year and a half. Thats 6 quarters in a row of losing money! Translation: If they don't stop giving away tons of performance for nothing, they'll die (2500+ Bartons for $85?? Sheesh). If you think prices are high now, wait till AMD dies. Tell me what you think of prices then :)Reply

It's almost comic to see people saying prescott is that good. It won't be cranking up the speed as the P4 did. It's already at 104watts of heat. There "PLANNED" fix is only to get it to 95 watts at launch. To crank this cpu up at all is going to require water cooling. Jeez, AthlonFX is only running around 60watts. Translation easy to jack up the clock whenever the process gets the kinks worked out. The biggest issue is ALREADY solved (heat). Intel has a long way to go (look at the roadmap, not many releases for Prescott in '04). AMD should have NO trouble keeping up and topping them in my book if desired. AMD has taken the lead and won't likely give it back for a while (save the stupid INTEL benchmarks by bapco and their other shill ZD). Check all review sites but anandtech and toms, take a trip to www.aceshardware.com for 15 games, 11 of which are victories for athlon, many by LARGE MARGINS, up to 43% faster in age of mythology! Two of the P4EE victories were 1% (margin of error that is). Look at how many are double digit victories for AthlonFX (again, this is against a chip that won't be available for 2 months at best).

Lets also not forget that AMD is in the drivers seat now with 64bit. Intel is USING AMD's instruction set! Intel is now in AMD's old boat. You will never be FASTER than the guy that wrote the actual instructions, when you are trying to reverse engineer them, emulate them and get them to work. How is Intel going to cheat with 64bit now, when AMD has control of the instruction set? There won't be an SSE2 cheat in the next batch of cheater benchmarks (you can't leave out AMD's 64bit instructions as the pricks did with sse2 this time).

I can't even believe that Anand did NOT turn on SSE/SSE2 in AthlonFX. Claiming he doesn't like to change benchmarks. Newsflash moron: Turning on the chips SSE does NOT change the benchmark. It merely recognizes the chip. Isn't this the FIRST thing you would do if you bought this chip? Go get a free download FROM microsoft that fixes their "ID INTEL ONLY" bug? Don't forget you SAID back in an old athlon article where you DID use this patch, that you would ONLY use it in the future if it was PUBLICLY released (and not a patch amd was just handing out to reviewers). Well, it's PUBLICLY released, and NOT by AMD. Microsoft officially supports this patch, which BTW doesn't change ONE BIT of scripting in the benchmark. It merely tells the benchmark, "hey, I've got SSE also, turn it on cheaters!". Look at the scores here:http://www.sudhian.com/showdocs.cfm?aid=434&pi...

Patched scores 64.3, while unpatched scores 52. NOTE: this only turns on SSE in ONE app included in this benchmark. Windows Media Encoder. I've got one question for bapco. Why does media encoder count for so much in their silly benchmark? AMD gains 20% in this ENTIRE benchmark just by turning on SSE in WME? WTF? More cheating.

One question for Anandtech: Why are you using such a cheating benchmark? What happened to CSA Research's benchmark that you loved until Intel told you stop using it? Don't forget INTEL hired the guy to write that benchmark. They just didn't like his results so fired him...LOL. When you tell the truth Intel gets pissed. If you're going to use this benchmark, do what ALL public users will do and turn on SSE. You said you'd use it if it was PUBLICLY available (this was in regards to last years version, but your statement should still hold true). AMD is no longer handing out patches to reviewers. MICROSOFT IS! Also silly in Anands benches is the use of lightwave after its already included in ZD's benchmarks. Where is the lightwave SUNSET benchmarks? Oh that's right, Intel didn't write that one, and they told you to use the other ones (held a meeting on sept8th just to get that straight, what you should use and should NOT use...Looks like anand was listening to Intel). Look at the studiomax benches elsewhere. Check Aceshardware again, for the STUDIO PC benchmark for 3dstudiomax. Daily use, by a company that USES the software, instead of a special written script from Intel. Hmm...AMD wins? Check out REAL TIME RAYRACING at aces. Hmm, amd wins? Mojo world, hmm...AMD wins? Looks like we better rethink this "workstation and rendering is better on Intel" crap eh? Check out Cinebench 2003's Cinema 4D benchmarks here:http://www.tech-report.com/reviews/2003q3/athlon64...

Look at those shading scores...Hmm, AMD wins in some cinema 4D benchmarks? Well, I guess there's a DIFFERENT side to the coin for all of anands claimed P4 victories in RENDERING. You should stop making blanket statements when you run so few rendering benchmarks (and all Intel's favorites at that, favorite scripts that is, with favorite filters). Clearly it depends on WHAT you are doing, as to WHO is the fastest chip for X rendering job eh?

Telling people to NOT buy AthlonFX is stupid too. What are you suggesting they buy then? A P4 that is a DEAD END SOCKET? Isn't this the same as AthlonFX51? Which AMD has said they will produce through end of 2004 (but that remains to be seen, I'd think they will make something else work in the boards first in 939 or something). It's the fastest chip on the block, but you shouldn't buy it. Cool, what should I buy right now?...ROFL.

AMD has totally lost their credibility? WTF? When did that happen? I'm a reseller and I must have missed this I guess? They can't get it back? I wasn't aware they lost credibility in the first place. How much did Intel pay you to say this crap? Did AMD chips suddenly get incompatible, or all die at once last week and I didn't hear about it? Don't complain about price either. If a chip CLEARLY smokes the competition, why should the winning company give the chips away at rock bottom prices? More BS. AMD had to price low when compatibility was an issue, and speed was an issue in some cases. Neither of these are issues today. They win in the majority of benchmarks (especially gaming!), they should charge accordingly. Markets set prices, companies don't. If they fly off the shelves at the current price, then its a price the market can bare isn't it? IF they sit on the shelf, clearly AMD will lower them. But I fail to see why you should lower your prices until the market tells you it won't pay what you're asking for the chip. Never heard of supply and demand eh? I price everything I sell, at whatever the top dollar is that I feel I can get. And adjust as needed after that. No business does any different. No business purposely low-balls themselves until FORCED to by market conditions. If AMD wasn't here, Intel would be still charging us $1000 for a top end cpu, and you'd still be telling us to buy them if we want the best chip on the block. Why is AMD different? AMD clearly wins, sells the chip at a relative price, (P4EE will be priced slightly HIGHER mind you and still loses) and you complain and say don't buy it? What's the excuse for the double standard? You've slowly joined tomshardware on the Intel side (I can't even believe tom's said ID Software makes Unreal Tourney and it isn't optimized for AthlonFX"...LOL. Uh, Epic makes it fool, and its was the first game announced FOR athlon64...ROFL. Why are you still using Quake3 (which toms still loves too...LOL)? This benchnmark is 3+yrs old! No CURRENT Q3 based benchmark shows a 50+fps lead for Intel. Nobody I know even plays Q3 today. Why use it? Where are the wolfenstein, or jedi2 benches (much more relevant if you're going to use a Q3 based game at all)? Why would you use a 3yr old benchmark when there are clearly more relevant benchmarks USING THE SAME ENGINE available to show todays performance? Was this just to slight AMD, because of their CLEAR victory in Unreal 2003, when showing botmatch? Which is where all games will lean AMD's way. If you are going online, prepare to have a slower gaming experience when a lot of people get in the game, no matter what game you're playing. TRUE CPU power kicks in then, and there are no tricks to pull to save you. Q3 just likes bandwidth, which is not an issue when online. CPU power is an issue online. When in a single player game the cpu is not your problem (at most you are calculating for 3 or 4 enemies on your screen and nothing happening elsewhere in the game). Online it IS your problem, as you calculate for everyone everywhere. Hence the stomping Intel receives in botmatch. This is also the case in strategy games and sims (racing etc), where calc's are made for TONS of units or a lot of AI. Same story, Intel gets killed. Hence the story with Age of mythology, Grand Prix4, Battlefield 1492, wolf enemy territory (hey isn't this a Q3 based game?..AMD kicks Intel A$$ in it! Oops, thats right, we should only be benching the 3yr old versions..Nobody plays WolF enemy territory, battlefield etc...Who plays new games? We all want those old benchmarks..LOL) and Medieval at aceshardware. The only one I can't figure out is Civ3. Hmm. With all that though, remember, you shouldn't buy this KILLER CPU...ROFL. Bring on the Prescott chip (at 104watts I need a heater this winter in oregon...hehe).

I'm also no fanboy (isnt it sad that on forums you have to start making your point by making sure everyone understands that you are not a fanboy?), but to be honest I don't think that Intel was ever truly leading in terms of CPUs. They did have the "performance crown" for the past few months, but AMD is still much better value for money. I know for a fact that I'd prefer to have a CPU thats 5% slower if it means I save myself enough money to have a twice as fast graphics card :)

Besdides, the times before the 2800+ were just taking the piss, as AMD CPUs were botrh cheaper AND faster :)Reply

Dudes, u gotta be kidding me.. isnt it obvious that Intel is winning and that AMD is just catching up. Im no Intel or AMD fanboy, i like good competition cause it makes better/cheaper products for me...=-).. AMD has just made a proc that can keep up with the P4 and beat it in some applications but Intel is already planning past the p4 and AMD has just caught up.. This is AMD's best VS. Intels old.. I think AMD will be behind a few months once again.Reply

The German TomsHardWare site has just revised its Athlon 64 review as they found they wer ebeing fooled by Intel as a marketing trick... I'm sure Tomshardware.com will be updated soon with the same info.

Basically the P4 EE isnt available until christmas or springtime which essentially makes any comparrison with the Athlon 64 or FX completely useless. The Athlon is available NOW, Intels chip is still 60-90 days away...Reply

AMDs chip seems to offer an incremental improvement in performance (like Intels offering). All this hype for products which offer moderate to good improvements in speed? Pretty anti-climactic. Let's have some real innovation here...something that actually increases the usefullness of a computer, not just ticking benchmarks up to the next level and claiming it's a revolution. Users with no sense of the value of money eat the marketing up and blow hundreds of dollars on the latest cpu while these companies laugh all the way to the bank. Reply

toms just revised their review, "Update Sept 24,2003: Unfortunately we have made a mistake in the original article: In addition to the official P4 EE 3.2GHz we had included benchmark scores of the P4 Extreme 3.4GHz and 3.6GHz. These values were planned for a future THG article and were not intended to be included here. We would like to apologize especially to those readers who misinterpreted our charts. The two bars of the P4 Extreme 3.4GHz and 3.6GHz have now been removed. However, this issue does not affect our conclusion as we have only compared the official P4 3.2GHz EE to all other test candidates in our original article. For your information: The press sample of the P4 Extreme provided by Intel does not have a multiplier lock and is already designed for higher clock speeds. "Reply

AMD needs to almost give this thing away so that it can sell well thus attracting a flood of 64 big developers. I think they should even do this to the detriment of their profit margins because if this doesnt sell well then all the software wont be developed. Its kinda like the chicken and the egg here and I think AMD should take a beating now in terms of $ to get this thing out and get 64 bit in the hands of the people. If everyone has it the software will follow.Reply

Logic dictates that people whom use the term "fanboy" are mentally disturbed persons whom feel the need to categorize others into a certain group to make themselves feel better. On a side note though I think the Athlon64 3200+ is winner given its current availability, price, and performance. I’m just curious as to how far AMD hopes to scale the processor for the remainder of the year as though I already know there will be a 3400+ release in short time, I am wondering if there will be a 3600+ release in anticipation of Prescott. I’m also curious as to how quickly AMD will transition it to 90nm as I’m thinking one of the main reasons AMD hasn’t really made full effort in mass producing K8 processors are the manufacturing costs at 130nm. Either way it’s nice to see such a chip out, especially at the price it is being quoted for (though it seems some people are having fits that they can’t buy A64s for $100).Reply

I think Intel is faring pretty well considering that AMD has reduced latency four fold with its integrated memory controller, incresed transistor performance by %30 with SOI, and doubled cache to 1MB. I think Intel will only close the gap with the upcomng Prescott but will pull ahead with LGA 775 Prescott and Grantsdale with PCI Express. Fanboys, save your speeches. Argue with logic.Reply

When is somebody going to come up with "folding" for people. We could use all the extra time people have on their hands debating what chip is better, to access their brain power to come up with cures for world hunger, A.I.D.S and introducing fanboys to fangirls. That being said, I appreciate all your opinions in helping me decide what chip to buy. Taking in to account the proccesing power I need for work and play, I have decided to buy an Xbox and a typewriter and forgo the 64 or P4EE. Reply

THIS FANBOY CRAP HAS TO STOP HOW NERDY CAN U BE??i am glad i am not so much into computers as most of u ;)...watch if one of these companies go out of business u see the survivor amd or intel making poor performing cpu's sold for $$$$ with a "take it of leave it" attitude...QUIT THE FANBOY CRAP truth is these companies don't give a shite about you only that little friend in your pocket that holds ur money Reply

The PM people believe that since they see the current situation in that Intel pays everyone not to use AMD, and that makes them a niche market. It's not due to AMD being slower or more error prone. Let's face it, Intel is bigger and has more to deal with, but as I've said before, they also can waste millions, perhaps a billion or so on Itanium and it's going nowhere. Perhaps it will now, but it's pretty stupid to see why. Sure it doesn't suffer from x86 legacy code. But look at what it took to get there, redoing software, apps, hardware, and a huge 400mm die. The Alpha people look to turn it into something, but that's alpha that made it something, otherwise it sucks.

It's pretty stupid to argue here that the P4 3.2 ghz is faster or the emergency (good one :) ) edition is, the Xenon or even Itanium architecture with the cpus sharing a FSB and memory via a hub or northbridge architecture sucks compared to the hyper transport architecture the Opteron uses, and no amount of clock speed or memory speed is going to change that.

I wonder if Intel can now use it's own Itaniums instead of Alphas to run it's chip production line.Reply

xbit labs did a pretty decent review and used "performance" platforms for the CPUs but left out VIA chipsets which people are saying are faster than nVidia for the AMD64 tests. Their conclusion was unbiased pointing out pros and cons of each processor type - I especially like the closing statement of how the current manufacturing processes are getting tapped out and it will be up to the new 90 nanometer process to get increased performance.

Tom's Hardware used the absolute best platforms under their optimal settings (i.e. the latest motherboards including both from nVidia and VIA for AMD, the latest optimized drivers, 4 x 256 DDR for Intel vs. 2 x 512) the way real enthusiasts would set their platforms up. Tom's conclusion tends to lean towards Intel with the P4 3.2 EE winning more tests than the Athlon FX - he did update his benchmarks and took out most of the overclocked P4 scores and I still count the P4 3.2 EE winning 26 benchmarks vs the Athlon FX winning 15.

HardOCP used an Intel Bonanza motherboard which doesn't really allow the P4s to perform at their best IMO - lower memory timings cause the Intel motherboard to perform slower than the 875 boards from ASUS and Abit. Their conclusion was that the new AMD chips are pretty good but AMD is still in a tight spot.

Extremetech also used the latest optimized platforms and also included nVidia and VIA chipsets. Their conclusion was pretty unbiased and left it to the reader to make their own choice. Reply

I still can't understand *why* people are hyping the emergency edition P4. You can't buy the chip and won't be able to for at least another two or more months. By the time the chip comes out it's already old news since the FX53 and Athlon64 3400+ will have already begun shipping with Prescott not too long after (well dunno about Prescott since those comments at IDF to the tune of a 3.2Ghz P4EE outperforming a 3.2Ghz Prescott don't seem good to me). Not to mention the fact that even against the current *available* processors it can't beat the FX51 in overall performance. What exactly is the good thing about this chip ATM?Reply

He was talking about the manufacturers when talking about credibility. Look at PM Forum part 2 just for an example, every single one of them considers AMD still being a niche player even with AMD64 and Intel being the technology leader. Don't forget that these AMD64 processors were supposed to come out over a year ago, but they weren't able to deliver at all. If they had, this would be a much different market than it is now. You should know by now that what fanboys believe to be the trends in the marketplace is completely different from reality.Reply

What on earth did Anand mean about AMD's loss of credibility? According to who? I mean, whatever you make of the P rating, who could possibly think that the XP wasn't a credible processor (even if the accuracy of the ratings exhibited slippage over time) or that the 64 wouldn't be a major improvement?

What was he trying to say by droning on and on about lost credibility? I really have no idea. Who was going around saying AMD wasn't "credible"? And what does that mean?Reply

This is the tiniest athlon64 test I've ever seen. Not only is it way too small to make a fair projection of amd's capacitys but you've not tested the P4 EE ... I think that this must be the worst review ever made by you guys... Reply

(this is #80) There are fanboys on both sides of the fence here. I think I tried to be as close to unbiased as I could, though I still think Toms benchies always seem skewed in a bad way. And in all fairness, if he oc'd his P4ee to 3.6, why not OC the AMD chips? Seems he's playing favorites to me..

The smart people always buy what is the best deal, regardless of the manufacturer (though almost everyone has a brand of something they won't buy again, regardless of product (clothing, food, etc..).

I currently have a P4 2.0a OC'd to 2.4 (took a new mobo to get there..the soyo just didn't cut it), so my soon to be here 2500+ and Nforce2 mobo may surprise the intel fanboys, but then I am not a fanboy. I was going to go with a 2.4c and Abit IS7-G but there was about a $120 price difference so I opted for a more economical route..(and if I can get 3200+ performance out of a $94 CPU that won't hurt either).. :-)

Anyway, I agree the fanboys on both sides need to read the facts and stop the bashing. It gets old fast and only shows ignorance.

I think the P4ee and FX are just too much for the mainstream/general public. VERY few people (well that I know anyway) have $800 just to blow on a CPU, plus any additional hardware needed (mobo, ram, etc) on a whim, so to me it seems the test will be how the 64 compares to the prescot. I also think AMD needs to drop the 64 price, but maybe that's just me.

And like it or not fanboys, there will almost always be tests where one CPU always wins over the other so take the tests with a grain of salt (this does apply to both sides of the fence).

When tax time rolls around in march or so if the 64 is price competitive to the P5/prescot and performance competitive I just may go that route. I imagine by then the new P5/prescots (not the soon to be out socket 478 variety) will be out and needing a new mobo also, so a mobo purchase looks to be in my future anyway.

But if the prescot blows away the 64 and is priced similiarly then that's where my money will go.

But again, like I stated previously, we do not want a "one choice" situation. That just bodes poorly for us, the consumer. So we have to think that AMD will do well. If not, the future will be bleak for u (remember we are only this far along due to the XP/P3-P4 battle that raged well over 2 years (correct?)..

It is very difficult to evaluate the performance or value of the Athlon 64 chips. It is not unlikely that most cpu demanding apps like video processing and 3d rendering will support 64 bit once more developers and users go over on Athlon 64. But untill then there is a draw between P4 3.2+ and FX-51. A stable motherboard is at least as important as the CPU.Reply

Enough of this pressithot shite! Yes i sound like a fanboy which i am but i'm not sounding like one LOL...anyways..next year we will see "Athens" @ 0.9nm with a Dual-channel DDR-|| controller and of course an improved Hypertransport Bus..possibly HTB2 and i tell ya..not even tejas will keep up @ WIN 64-bit mode.Reply

Well I have read the Anand, Toms, and Tech Report reviews (about to read a few more)..

Anand - I do have to agree that P4ee tests shouldn't have been left out, that just doesn't look fair to the readers and does appear to show some bias. Also most of the other sites seem to have the via chipset ahead of the nvidia.

Toms review was very in depth but I have to question why he chose to include OC'd P4EE scores? I see no other reason other than to have the P4EEs at the top of every possible chart. I have always been a little leary of Toms CPU reviews. I have never read so many reviews (on one site) where AMD loses so often and by such a large margin practically every single test. I have read CPU reviews from several sites and on the other sites the XPs seem to fair quite a bit better.

And doesn't it seem like he inlcudes OC'd P4 scores in almost every single CPU review? I could be wrong here..anyone?

And in Toms own words several of the tests were intel optimized, so shouldn't the P4ee win regardless (as is usually the case with almost any appilication specific optimization)..

Tech Reports review seemed like it was pretty good. They ran several test and both the P4ee and the 64/fx faired pretty well.

I am looking foward to reading more reviews today.

I DO have to agree on one thing here though : AMD in the past has always done well due to it's pricing structure. The low end has almost always been very affordable and very competitive, and that's where they aqquired most of their user base.

To totally go against that makes sense in a financial way for AMD, but not for the customer.

With the looming prescot on the horizon I am curious to see how things turn out.

When tax time rolls around I will be upgrading my CPU and Motherboard (and ram "if" necessary), and I hope it isn't a one sided decision as far as who I go with..(heck, I just purchased an Nforce 2 motherboard (Soltek SL-75FRN2-RL) and retail Barton 2500+ for $184 shipped from newegg (will be here thursday), with hope of hitting 3200+ speeds (several seem to have had luck with it)..so it isn't like I am an intel zealot or anything).

I just hope the 64 line scales well and can keep up with the prescot. If the prescot performs as well as the P4ee things will be difficult for AMD. I hope they do well as I am interested in the 64 and if it a good choice at tax time it will get my money.

NO ONE (well in the general public) wants to pay $700-800 for a cpu, over $300 for MORE memory and $160-200 for a new motherboard when a $700-800 P4ee cpu performs almost as well (in some tests as it did lose some to the fx51)..if you have a socket 478 motherboard with the correct chipset that is.

But even then going the P4ee route you can more than likely still use your current ddr ram (anyone looking to buy a $700-800 cpu more than likely has adequate memory) and a motherboard can be had for less than $100.

I REALLY hope AMD does well, if for nothing more than the sole purpose of having more than one choice (we DO NOT want that people). Like I said I have interests in the new AMD cpus and tax time is about 6 months away, so it gives AMD time to get things rolling.

But, if the prescot performs just as well if not better (totally up in the air and we have NO benchmarks or real specs (CPU speed, etc) of any worth and cost the same if not less, the battle will be a very hard one for AMD...and my money in't brand loyal (intel fanboys take note)..

Isn't the soon to come prescot (not the initial launch version) supposed to be a new socket type, or am I on something? :-P

I have probably forgotten something I wanted to say, but I'll post again if I do.

Just wanted to say that I'm a bit dissappointed in your review. Not much mention of the hardware config, using nforce3 boards with a problem, and the conclusion based on comments like '(on pricing) which is a mistake for a company that has lost so much credibility'. Um, maybe in your eyes, but lets focus on the facts next time, rather than perceived credibility. I don't feel that AMD has lost credibility on the basis of benchmarks, in fact, they seem to be far more upstanding than their competitor in this regard. In any case, the A64 is shipping and beats its competitor in most benchmarks (based on results from just about everywhere except Tom's Hardware). As well, the A64 3200+ is about 50% cheaper than Intel's comparable offering, and I expect that AMD will continue to offer less expensive and better products than Intel as pricing changes - there is a long history of this situation. Your comments seem particularly off the mark when this example is considered.

I don't purchase cpu's based on a company's credibility, I buy them based on stability, performance, and architecture (ie. how long is the platform going to be around), in that order of priority. I don't feel like Anandtech helped me make a decision with the tests run or conclusion drawn. I'm sorry to see such a worthy site as yours stumbling.

The Intel/AMD fanbois don't have anything on the NVidia/ATi ones I can tell ya, but it's still true that all fanbois are dumbest...

AMD's Athlon success has been built on having better bang for buck than Intel. If they cannot offer this advantage then it seems likely that they will suffer, regardless of what the enthusiast market does.

Regardless of who has the faster chip what counts is that AMD are competitive - it's the only thing that is going to keep Intel honest on pricing.Reply

The reason Intel chose 2MB L3 cache for the P4 EE was stated on several other review sites as "vertex buffers for many games reside neatly in 2MB of cache. Secondarily, a full frame of video at D1 resolution requires just a little more than 1MB of cache" so I'm wondering if Intel's next generation Pentium M with the 2MB L2 cache will be the next awesome gaming chip? Oh heck - just ask Intel to make the Prescott EE version with 2 MB of L2 cache and skip the L3.Reply

If you have to pay for a new system, you might as well pay for the fastest http://www.go-l.com/miva/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&a... This thing will probably hit a cool 4 GHz with the FSB cranked up to 250 MHz (x 16) - so the answer to the Athlon 64 3400+ and even FX 52/53 already exists.Reply

Agreed "BIASED" - furthermore it's more than suspicious they "forgot" to show us some P4EE-results is certain tests. It suggests P4EE was better than the whole AMD-branch, but AMD pays them more :)Reply

The Athlon 64 3200+ ($417) is definitely the most interesting offering. With the exception of Ghost Recon and Enemy Territory, it outperforms its direct competitor, which is about 50% more expensive. Intel will lower the price next month from $637 to $417, but until then is the Athlon 64 a bargain for the enthusiast (and AMD will probably adapt prices too).

The Athlon 64 FX-51 is indeed the fastest desktop processor right now as the Pentium 4 EE is not really available to the enthusiast. The large L3-cache of Pentium 4 EE gives it an advantage in applications like 3D Animation, but in games the Athlon 64 FX-51 is overall the fastest processor. However, the high price tag plus the fact that you have to buy buffered RAM makes the Athlon FX-51 less interesting from a price/performance perspective.

We can't help it but geeks as we are we also like to look at the architecture. From an architectural point of view, the Athlon 64 shines: all the rough edges of the K7 architecture have been perfected, and the Athlon 64 architecture is - despite still being based on ancient x86 - a very balanced and elegant design. The rough K7 diamond has been cut and polished and shines brightly now, especially when you look at how well this CPU scales with higher frequencies. We will show you more in our next review.

One thing that could justify the rather high system cost of an Athlon 64 FX based PC is the extra memory space and performance in Windows 64. Windows 64 is not ready yet, though. NVIDIA OpenGL Drivers, for example, do not seem to support hardware acceleration and few applications have been ported so far as the OS in a beta phase. The future of AMD64 is a bit murky: many companies want to support the Opteron and Athlon 64 as a 32 bit chip, but have "a wait and see attitude" when it comes to porting their applications to 64-bit.

There are so many 64-bit roads that Intel may take, and therefore it is very hard to predict what future AMD64 has. Intel and HP are very committed to the Itanium, and the performance and industry acceptance of the Itanium are finally taking off. So we definitely can forget the scenario where Intel will ditch IA-64 for some form of x86-64, even though it is very likely that Prescott has some 64-bit functionality hidden away.

The most likely scenario is that Intel will try to push the Itanium towards the gigantic dual processor market more quickly, at the expense of the Xeon. While Madison and McKinley were typically CPUs for scientific and large database applications (backend of 3-tier model), Deerfield is already destined to find a place in front end (application servers like webserver etc.) and blade market (HPC).

When the Itanium family finally begins to replace the Xeon in both the workstation and server market, Intel can proceed with extending x86 to 64-bit as well and try to pull the plug out of AMD64. Because at that point, the Itanium will no longer be so vulnerable to poor ISV support. Introducing a form of Intel x86-64 in the coming moths would trample the Itanium sapling just at a time when it shows promise to grow faster.

Essentially, AMD has a few years to gather enough support and marketshare. AMD will have to do better than ever before, but the first steps in right direction have been taken.

For the moment, the future of AMD64 is no concern to the average user. The Athlon 64 (non-FX) line gives you excellent 32-bit performance for a decent price, and maybe even more importantly it is a much safer CPU. Replacing or inserting an AMD CPU is no longer a risky endeavour. Computer shops and enthusiasts, in particular, will appreciate this. Reply

Wow... to tell you guys the truth, after all the hype, all the promises, and all the amd fans uttering "AMD 64" like they praying... I expected a bigger performance difference between the P4EE and the AMD64.. Like the AMD64 was supposed to crush it... but looks like the p4ee keeps up with it just fine. hmm.. so all im saying is it doesnt live up to the hype, but its fast, and it deserves props for that.Reply

Nice review anand, however I am missing the P4 EE in a number of the tests, as previous post (#67) suggested.

The Athlon 64/A64 FX appears to be a nice processor, for a shiny new design cpu the advantages were expectable.

Some more 64bit tests, maybe a divx codec pre-compiled for 64bit in a test?

As for the amd vs intel combat:The A64 and A64FX match up a lot better against the latest p4/p4EE. I wouldnt have expected anything else.While the prescot still lurks in the dark and I have a feeling Intel has something up their sleeve I wouldnt call the prescot an failure yet.If Intel plays nicely along, maybe they can create a cpu that beats the A64/A64FX in 32 (and just maybe in 64bit http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=11668).

Either way, the more AMD and Intel compete each other, the happier I am, after all I end up paying less for either cpu.Reply

I'm curious why RedHat Taroon, which is an enterprise-focused Linux distribution, was used for the 64-bit benchmarks and not RedHat GinGin64, which is more consumer-focused. Both are available from the RedHat FTP site. Reply

Several of the benchmarks left out the P4 Extreme scores (memory bandwidth, Content Creation 2003, and Virtual Studio 6.0 Compile) - was that a mistake or benchmarking per AMD's new guidelines? It's also funny that this is one of the first Anandtech CPU reviews without the full system specs documented (i.e. ECC memory vs non ECC, Intel branded motherboard vs. ASUS enthusiast motherboard, memory latency settings, etc.) - more AMD review guidelines?

The way I see it, you can either spend the money on a whole new Athlon 64/FX CPU, motherboard, and memory outfit, or buy a P4 EE and stick it into any motherboard today that accepts a 3.2 GHz CPU - that sure beats having to buy a new motherboard and memory to get about the same level of performance average across the board.

Even when 64-bit Windows comes out, does everyone really think that Microsoft and Bill Gates will really make it priced at mainstream levels and reduce the cost of the current 32-bit Windows XP so soon? I have my doubts but I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Another interesting thing to note from Tom's Hardware review is that the 64-bit code for AMD64 does run faster on 64-bit OS but if you read carefully, he says that the same program optimized for the P4 runs even faster on 32-bit OS. So, software companies will probably have to make a choice (unless they are big enough and make enough money to serve all markets): A - optimize 32-bit software to take advantage of the P4/Prescott and Hyperthreading using compilers that Intel provides, or B - compile 64-bit software for which there is still no mainstream OS and there are hardly any standard compilers available for and market them to the 500,000 or so people who will have the opportunity to own AMD64 desktop chips this year.

Sure Intel has a problem with the Prescott heat dissipation right now but I don't think they will be sitting idle. Thermal interface technology is getting better all of the time and I wouldn't doubt if Intel isn't already making process improvements and/or implementing newer cooling methods. After all, it was Intel who came up with the heatspreader design for the current generation P4 that is now being used by Hammer chips.

Once the Prescott on .09-micron technology hits the streets it will continue to be refined and improved upon so the clock speed will continue to increase. Imagine a Prescott EE CPU with 1MB L2 and 2MB L3 or more. What would be a real thorn in AMD's side would be if Intel makes a shrink of the current P4 onto the new .09-micron technology and increases the clock speed to the 4 GHz level (already achievable by some CPUs on the current .13-micron process) to keep pace with the Athlon 64/FX which is supposed to be AMD's next generation CPU. They could put a whole bunch of P4 die (even P4 EE die) on a 300 mm wafer and put a hurting on AMD until they can get their 90nm process and 300mm wafer process going. It is a scary possibility for AMD but could be reality for Intel - meanwhile, AMD still has to face the daunting task of converting to 300mm wafers and 90nm process at the same time to keep up. AMD says that they will start 90nm production in the first half of 2004, but then again, they've been promising hammer since 2001. But they have to do something because with their current situation of roughly 192 square millimeters per Athlon 64/FX die on a 200mm wafer yields a theoretical 73 die per wafer (per Tom's Hardware review). And I believe that AMD wants to put all of their products on the same line and differentiate them at the end - similar to the way Intel does with their Northwood/Celeron products (same die with certain cache and other things disabled) - so even the 256K L2 cache mainstream Athlon 64 comes out, it may still be the same size as all of the other Athlon 64/FX/Opterons.

Hector Ruiz, Jerry Sanders and AMD as a whole have a very steep mountain in front of them to climb. Time will tell if they have what it takes to get up and over it. The first checkpoint for them will come in about 3 weeks in the form of Q3 earnings. By then we'll see how sales of their new CPUs are going and if their joint venture in FLASH pays off. (It didn't really make sense to me for them to lay off 2000 people at the beginning of the year to reduce costs and then turn around 2 quarters later and pick up 7000 people in the FLASH venture with Fujitsu which comes with more debt than earnings.) I'm not a betting man, but if I were, my money would be on AMD making 9 straight quarters of losses in a row. When Hector Ruiz came to office he vowed that AMD restructuring would make them hit break-even sometime around Q2 2003 but that never happened. There seems to be a pattern with promises made by AMD. I guess it's why his 3 million stock options which were granted at $16 are still under water.Reply

Apparently the FX series is unlocked multiplier, and mobos will be coming shortly that have multiplier selection options (read Anand's "weblog" entry)... I can't wait to see the results of a 13x 220 FX-51; now, THAT I might part with $800 to play with... Talk about insanely fast processors, the higher FX goes, the smaller Intel's lead gets.Whoever said that throwing more cache on the P4 core beat Hammer is just deluded; P4 is at the end of its line, AMD64 is just beginning. And once again, Intel supporters seem to grow rather silent when you point out that the on-die memory controller becomes significantly more powerful when the clock speeds ramp up; a 3.3GHz FX chip would be more than a match for a 3.4GHz Prescott, I'd think. Memory bandwidth advantage is a thing of the past for Intel, now it's up to AMD to shore up their lacking SSE/SSE2 performance and work on speeding up the core, as well as meeting the demand for such upgraded processors.

I'm not normally so pro-AMD (though I support their products more than Intel's, just from a cost efficiency standpoint), but it's kind of hard to not be wowed by the muscle this chip can flex. I mean, this is the Day One marketed "prototype" and it's capable of matching its most recent and mature rivals, can you imagine what next year is going to look like?Reply

The fact that Intel HAD to release a EE edition shows desparation at looking behind. Yeah, so the Prescott does look good. That and the 103w dissipation, unconfirmed if it is on the 90 process, if it is then that's pathetic.

I can buy a Athlon 64 or FX, where is the EE like others said? And why was the NDA lifted on the same day as the AMD Athlon 64?

Complaining about price? The 1.5ghz P4 costed around $1000 when it came out and was slower than a P3 1.0ghz, while the new Athlon 64 always is faster than the XP.Reply

AMD is still the underdog :P Always will be. You get what you pay for.

AMD is for the guys who love to root for the underdog; in otherwords fanboys. If you want solid, no hassle performance with top support .. you know where to put your money.

I mean christ, Intel doesn't even have to design a next generation core to outmatch AMD's next core eveolution -K8- they just simply tack on more cache ;) How sad is that?

AMD fans, take a hint ... AMD's STILL playing cat-up with Intel. Read the article closely, and you'll see what I mean -the author hints at it so clearly as well- Its so easy to see. AMD has never had the advantage ;) Only clever marketing which most people pin as bad marketing on AMD's part. Quite the contrary, Stupid kids!Reply

Anyone know how the new AMD CPU compares to the Apple G5? I am not an Mac-Apple guy, but my in-laws are, and I'd like to be in the know in case we get into a friendly "discussion" about the Windows and Mac platforms.Reply

This review appears to be in the same general lines as the rest of the Opteron/Pentium comparisons; I'm pleased that AMD has managed to shore up their shortcomings, but the price point is what's keeping me away from going directly from a pre-XP AMD Athlon to Athlon64. If I spend $400+ on a processor, it better be the king of the hill for the next year at least, or at least the mobo should be upgradeable to compensate for CPU obsolesence.And I'm surprised no one's figured out how to unlock Opteron multipliers yet, since that's basically the heart of the early-day AXP overclocking scene... Bridge blowing, soldering, "wire mods", etc. Shame, shame on you overclocking enthusiasts for not throwing everything into unlocking the hottest new processor (figuratively, not literally; Prescott and P4EE take that award at 103W and 150W, respectively). :P Talk about good wholesome fun, take an Opteron at 3.4GHz (using multipliers) and slap that Zalman Cu-7000 thing on it; a Pen-what?

Is AMD actually planning on selling these versions of the 64? They and the hardware will be obsolete the day they are purchased. THe two biggest advantages the chip has can't even be used yet. The new mobos can't handle any more Ram than the current Pentium boards, I thought being able to use more ram was one of the selling points of the 64? Although that point seems to be moot anyway until a new 64 bit os is out. Reply

original pentium 66 was pants got beat by a 486original pentium 4 was just as badgive it 6 months for the chip to mature. hopefully the athlon64 is a success cause if amd go bust we all pay double for cpusReply

There's some confusion on using the term 32bit and x86 here. I believe what was mean in response to what #32 said, is that A64 runs x86 natively the same way a XP does with no emulation, (as was outlined in previous Anandtech articles) just by disabling half of the 64-bit registers. So it had better run at least as well as the Athlon XP/P4 or there is something seriously wrong... not something to brag about.

#50, For an Intel fanboy you sure don't know your history. Using 386 would be more appropriate as that was the change from 16-bit to 32-bit... and things have not fundamentally changed in the instruction set since then.Reply

Price is more important for AMD because they've had their successes mainly on the price/performance front. If they are truly trying to match Intel on price, that advantage is essentially gone and it'll be an even harder battle to gain marketshare.

1) The only thing Intel has that can toach FX-51 is the XeonMP, errrr, P4:EE. This processor doesn't start shipping for 2 to 3 months. I can understand including it in the review, but there should be some sort of disclaimer stating that this is a sample and may or not be reflective of the final product. The EE's also will only be released to the OEMs, so expect to have to pay VooDoo or AlienWare there outragous prices if you want one.

2) The Intel fanboys ADMITT defeat. They are already rationlizing it by saying wait for Prescott to come out. All prescott is is a p4 clocked to 3.4 ghz with "improved hyperthreading." "The 11 new intruction sets" won't make any difference for a year or so (kind of like 64 bit goodness that you are bashing). But I guess the added bonus that you can heat a small house with it is something that AMD can't provide.

And I wish people would stop complaing about the price. All new processors cost this much when they are first released. They'll come down, but not to the price of XPs for a while to come. The mobo costs will also drop drastcaly (past nForce2 prices?) over the comeing months beause of no north bridge and only a 6 layer PCB.Reply

64bit with 32bit compatibility would be what Itanium does. AMD64 is still native x86 with the ability to use 64-bit registers, thats why it can still run 32-bit programs as fast/faster than current CPUs.

#38, Huh how heck are we forgetting something NO ONE KNOWS? Has Intel ever really givin an absolute upper limit to the Prescott clocks throughout the year? Last time I heard Tejas would takeover after 4.2Ghz.Reply

LOL, you all who think that intel is the winner here, just continue to believe so, but don't tell anyone.

If Prescott was so great we should have seen "leaked" benchmarks by now. I saw benchmarks of the Clawhammer more than a year ago.

AMD can not outperform intel because they'll get problems with their supply. That's one of the main reasons AMD don't want to release a cpu that will beat all intel offerings. Imagine what will happen if everyone wants an AMD. Reply

#29, Didn't Intel reps at IDF make comments to the tune of a 3.2Ghz P4EE offering up better overall performance than a 3.2Ghz Prescott? How heck is Prescott going to change things when it's debutting at 3.4Ghz and going to be up against an FX51 and A64 3400+ (possibly even FX55)?!!?? What part of that shows Intel sailing through 2004 when Prescott is expected to max out at around 4Ghz and A64 hasn't even gone through a die shrink and is already performance competitive with it from the initial 130nm A64 releases??!?Reply

Athlon64 isnt running in 32bit compatibility mode. It's still a 32-bit processor with 64-bit extensions, not the other way around. Pure 64-bit processors will trounce it in 64-bit apps.

Just keeping up with Intel isn't enough, they needed to take the performance crown without any doubt to really gain back marketshare, right now this is just good enough to tread water, especially considering their pricing. How the next year plays out will be interesting though.Reply

For everyone saying that the Athlon64 was NOT the so-called AMD Killer, I just have one question:

How can you say a 64-bit processor running in 32-bit compatibility mode that keeps up with the best Intel processor, the P4EE, disappointing? Me, I'm waiting for some more 64-bit programs to judge the strength of the Athlon 64. The fact that the Athlon 64 can keep up and sometime pass Intel in 32 bits is awesome.

BTW, I'm not an AMD fanboy. I have both AMD and Intel processors. But I find the Intel zealots are trying to discredit this processor by insisting on only looking at half the picture. Just my opinion.Reply

Personally this was rather anti-climatic for me. It's certainly not a Intel killer that all the hype proclaimed. AMD for business, Intel for content, and a throwup for gaming. Same as it has been for awhile.Reply

#20 are you serious? Did you just comment in the forum without looking at the review or did you actually look at the review. AMD is not "lagging" behind Intel. They are right up there with them. Look at the benchmarks and you will see the CURRENTLY AVAILABLE Athlon64 easily matches a NOT CURRENTLY AVAILABLE P4EE.Reply

#20 are you serious? Did you just comment in the forum without looking at the review or did you actually look at the review. AMD is not "lagging" behind Intel. They are right up there with them. Look at the benchmarks and you will see the CURRENTLY AVAILABLE Athlon64 easily matches a NOT CURRENTLY AVAILABLE P4EE.Reply

The extremely low AGP performance of the NForce3 can be clearly attributed to problems with the HyperTransport channel interface to the Northbridge. That is proven by the benchmark results and the performance differences of up to 33.2 percent. Details about this can be found in the benchmark section of this article.

Originally, Nvidia had planned to also integrate a SATA RAID controller in the Southbridge. Although the controller is included in the current NForce 3, Nvidia deactivated this feature. The reason was that error-free operation was not possible. For this reason, we decided to use additional boards based on the VIA K8T800 chipset.

Nvidia (Athlon 64 FX, or alternatively GeForce FX - related names) may be a more high-profile partner for AMD than VIA. However, we would point out that VIA, with the K8T800 chipset, currently offers a clearly better solution for the Athlon 64.

#4 You may be right (I don't think so but let say you are), but then ask yourself - where is the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition? There is no mention of this CPU at Intel web site at all, there is no datasheet and no batch numbers. Today, it is only a prototype CPU, such as Prescott is. They managed to build few Gallatin B1 cores that are able to work at this frequency and then remarked them. This CPU is not reality, only OEMs can buy it in very limited quantities, but end users can't. I think a 3 GHz Athlon 64 FX on 90nm prototype would perform far the best in this review... and it would be the same policy as with this Pentium 4 Extreme Edition.Reply

1. Athlon 64's memory controller is very fast as you can see from the benchmarks. Dual channel is only needed in some situations to give decent performance. HT operates at 800 MHz with DDR and 16 bits, thus giving 3.2 GB/s each way (6.4 GB/s). Not so bad for a I/O and AGP interface only bus

3. S754 is a lower end platform while S940 is an Opteron platform. AMD will introduce S939 early next year and will continue to produce CPUs for all those sockets. S940 A64 FX will, however, disapper in the end of next year.

6. HyperTransport "Tunnel" system allows for practically unlimited number of chipset combinations, thus a PCI Express will only require to add another Tunnel or integrate it into current chipsets.Reply

i agree. good review, and how anyone could see an AMD bias in that article, i have no idea. he fvcking said repeatedly that AMD isn't really cutting it with the A64/FX. the worst type of fanboy is one that cant read.

its sad to see AMD lagging like this... if they fall too far behind, they wont be able to compete with Intel on a high-end level at all - which sucks for competition.Reply

#15, doesn't the fact that you can buy an FX51 along with an Athlon64 3200+ at a variety of stores now contradict that statement? I mean someone even said they sighted them in retail stores and the sort across the world before even launch.Reply

3. After launching on two different Sockets (754 & 940) - is AMD going to convert everything over to 939 in '04, or are we going to see high-end on 940 and low-end on 754?

4. Where are the UT2K3 64-bit version benches?

5. I know it's kind of hard to judge, but how is the driver support for 64-bit coming along? (As a measure, does anyone know if nvidia and/or ATI will be ready with 64-bit drivers by the new WinXP64 launch?)

6. This is more of a mobo/chipset questions, but where does PCI Express/3GIO fit into AMD's hypertransport plans?Reply

What i really dont understand is this: "AMD has lost a considerable amount of credibility" and again : "AMD has also priced the Athlon 64 and Athlon 64 FX very much like the Pentium 4s they compete with, which is a mistake for a company that has lost so much credibility"

All reviews (with exception of Toms Hardware and x86secret, go figure) show the FX51 outpacing the P4 Emergency Edition in the gross majority of benches. That's not even counting the fact the P4EE isn't even going to be available until November (making this a paper launch) and by it's availability the FX53 and Athlon64 3400+ will have already been out in the market with us looking forward to the FX55 in late 2003 or early 2004.Reply

"Notice here the contrast between the Athlon 64 FX with the K8T800 and with the nForce3 Pro. With the K8T800, the Athlon 64 FX is arguably the fastest system overall in the viewperf suite. The nForce3 Pro, however, seems to limit performance quite a bit."Reply

The P4EE whoops new AMDs chip and you say is "The Pentium 4 EE manages to regain some lost ground for Intel, but not enough". YOU ARE CRAZY!!!!!! The Prescott will DEMOLISH AMD once and for all. Btw, get some more benchmarks. Q3 and UT2003 are OLD GAMES using DX8. Run Battlefield and other memory/cpu entensive games.

AMD fanboys can't cry about their chip is slower but cheaper either.

Worst biased site ever. Just because they kissed your butt and showed you the cpu's a year in advance you shove your nose up AMDs socket.

What people tend to forget is that 3200+ is the INITIAL speed from the first batch of CPU's. As with the XP the speed will increase rather rapidly as well as die-quality and tweaks/performance fixes. Athlon XP debuted at what, 1500+ (?) and now ends at 3200+. The A64 going to 90nm will yield some neat increases in available speeds (4800+ anyone?) ;)Reply